Voodoo 3 Shootout \ VOGONS

Voodoo 3 Shootout

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First post, by mwdmeyer

Posted on 2024-06-12, 04:22

mwdmeyer Offline

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Location: Sydney, Australia

Hi All,

I have every (I think!) Voodoo 3 video card from a Velocity 100 through to a Voodoo 3 3500 and wanted to compare all of the different configurations including: PCI vs AGP, 1 vs 2 TMU, 8MB vs 16MB VRAM, SGRAM vs SDRAM, Core/Memory Scaling and CPU scaling.

I've put together all of the information into a youtube video but have also include the PDF slides with graphs and also raw results in excel.

I tested Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal, 3dmark2000 & Expendable.

I hope it is of interest to some people! Welcome any feedback (good or bad!).

Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/Ss9vDF_FNfI?si=jU2uXfoFRau7YNGU
PDF slides: https://www.vogonswiki.com/images/e/ea/Voodoo_3_shootout.pdf
Raw Results: https://www.vogonswiki.com/images/1/12/3dfx_V … 3_Shootout.xlsx

Vogons Wiki - http://vogonswiki.com

Reply 1 of 5, by Ozzuneoj

Posted on 2024-06-12, 04:34

Ozzuneoj Offline

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Nice work! I especially appreciate the SDRAM vs SGRAM benchmarks, as well as the Velocity 100 comparisons. Definitely looks like an 8MB Velocity 100 with the 2nd TMU enabled is a solid card to get high frame rates from older (pre-1999) games at moderate resolutions without having to spend so much on a 16MB V3.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 2 of 5, by mwdmeyer

Posted on 2024-06-12, 04:36

mwdmeyer Offline

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Joined: 2012-03-06, 11:35
Location: Sydney, Australia

Thanks & agree, the Velocity 100 is a great fast card if you can stay in the 8mb vram limit, and for glide that seems no issue.

Vogons Wiki - http://vogonswiki.com

Reply 3 of 5, by Joseph_Joestar

Posted on 2024-06-12, 06:03

Joseph_Joestar Offline

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Very interesting results! Especially the PCI vs. AGP comparison.

One small note, if I may. For the CPU speed comparison (500 MHz vs. 1 GHz) it would have made more sense to use a lower resolution like 640x480. With 1024x768 you will likely get GPU bottlenecked on Voodoo 3 cards.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Core 2 Duo E8600 / Foxconn P35AX-S / X800 / Audigy2 ZS
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 980Ti / X-Fi Titanium

Reply 4 of 5, by pshipkov

Posted on 2024-06-12, 06:41

pshipkov Offline

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Cool.
One takeaway from the numbers is that the system is CPU limited and the V cards are slacking most of the time.
May be good to spin them with faster CPU one day.

retro bits and bytes

Reply 5 of 5, by smola

Posted on 2024-06-12, 15:37

smola Offline

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Joined: 2024-02-20, 17:26

Great comparisons. I'd add 640x480x16 modes and please, convert textured pictures from bars in pdf to ordinary squared colored boxes. Now pdf has 44MB, it's total overkill where should have less than 100kB. Cheers 😀

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